Not a problem with gb..

I think tourney settings are generally not very forgiving

We don't have that problem w/older classic games.

The things you mentioned would make some difference, but the bigger issue is that modern games are designed with less randomness. Pop bumpers are cordoned off into their own room. Most major shots are returned to the flippers safely.

Open the outlanes as wide as possible. And remove the rubber posts on those inlane/outlane dividers, makes it much harder to bounce the ball out of those areas.

If a game comes with a middle post between the flippers, remove it.

On games with rubber posts next to ramps (like LOTR pictured below), replace with wider rubber making the shot even tighter and more precise to hit. Bricks come back at you super fast and makes the ball hard to control, sometimes SDTM.

Turn the settings to difficult/hard/extra hard. Multiballs and such are much harder to achieve. Going back to LOTR, the "KEEP" letters go out if you have all four of them lit and roll over one of the switches again.

Turn off extra balls.

Steeper angle of the machine can also make some games more difficult.

LOTR_Pin_(resized).jpg

Replace all newer games with two inch flipper games from the 60s and prior is the only real solution. And it works!

Remove one flipper and the remaining flipper's button.

Pinball shouldn't play like pachinko. Kills the newbie experience.

THATS the answer!!!

And your point is?

If you don't like vintage games, you can try something like this.

b7f9070f169bcec87f22f65dd43367be57c27021_(resized).jpg

When you don't have that "one more play" ball times and game you don't want to play. I can't stand alot of DMD's and this is the reason why. Ridiculous.

Strip the playfield entirely and hang it on your wall. Ta-da! Now the ball time is nothing.

I prefer games that have shorter ball times, but not because it's cheap or the ball is constantly wild. I like games that have good risk/reward strategies and you drain because you were stretching for something difficult, but rewarding. Games like Iron Man or Tron where if you key into the flow you can put up big points, but if you miss you're going to get punished, are just a blast to play.

I can enjoy long ball games, like Spider-Man or Star Trek, and they are fun to really blow up and progress through, but I would usually rather play 2-3 games on a Metallica or Ghostbusters in that same amount of time and really have the game challenge me.

IM and TWD have short ball times. LOTR and tspp opposite side of the spectrum. All are great.

We had league finals the other night and it took us almost 45 minutes to finish a 4-player game of Shrek set to factory defaults. The scoop is such a safe shot that everyone got Donkey Pinball at least three times, leading to Donkey Multiball, and then coupled with add-a-balls from the fairy, random multiball awards from the swamp, and especially that stupid up-post (was that thing really necessary?!), it took FOR.EVER. 27 million points was only good enough for third place. The sight of that game makes my skin crawl now.

I don't get why Shrek keeps showing up in tournaments. It's a very long ball game and the waits for it in qualifying get ridiculous.

I can't understand it either. I'm not complaining that it's on location here; we're happy to get as much variety in the games as possible, but it really does feel like it was designed to be easy for kids, not veteran tournament players. I was shocked to see one of our local players had to play on it at the IFPA World Championships last year, although I haven't asked him how hard it was set up.

Games with ball save posts should be disabled especially for competition and tournaments.
Another thing that plays a huge role in long ball times are the sling shots. They need to be strong and the leaf switches need to be set just right.
Otherwise it's not as difficult and long ball times ensue.

It was picked as the tiebreaker game at IFPA12 in 2015. 8 players were tied to make the cut. Video footage here:

Our game setup included:

-no extra balls
-no ball saver
-competition mode set to YES
-up post disabled
-outlane posts to maximum open position
-game set to maximum slope
-donkey playfield set to "sudden death+timer" (so you can't play on the mini playfield forever)

You can't turn them off